Beers to the future

With beer sales in decline there is talk of a crisis. Ben McFarland puts the key questions of what can be done to brewing industry figures.

Beer is on the verge of a crisis. Lager is waning and cask ale is in all kinds of trouble. Beer has declined by 20 million barrels in the last two decades, 14 million of which have been lost in the on-trade. If the trend continues at the same rate, there won't be an on-trade beer sector to speak of.

The fact that beer still accounts for 60 per cent of on-trade sales suggests there's nothing to worry about but it's a figure that merely papers over the cracks.

The people doing most of the beer drinking and keeping the industry afloat are not getting any younger and brewers are desperately trying to capture the hearts, minds and future disposable income of young drinkers.

The future of beer is in the hands of 18 to 24-year-olds.

Unfortunately, these are hands that are all too often wrapped around a brightly coloured bottle of premium packaged spirit and there's a genuine fear that there might be a whole generation of drinkers that will bypass beer altogether.

So what can be done to persuade these young whippersnappers to go with the grain? thePublican.com put the following key questions to some of the industry figures responsible for securing beer's long-term future:

• It is reported that only 10 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds drink beer, what one thing do you think brewers should do to attract more young drinkers?
• What is the future role for cask ale - is it destined to become a specialist, niche product?
• Glassware is seen by many as key to beer's future. Is the traditional pint glass dead and do you advocate the introduction of a third of a pint measures?
• Should brewers unite and invest in a generic marketing campaign for beer?
• Which two celebrities, one male and one female, would you choose to champion beer in the pages of style magazines and the press?

Jeff and Steve Pickthall, owners, the Microbar, Clapham, London​

• Brewers should ignore younger drinkers and portray beer as the drink of "grown ups" - in contrast to the approach used in the marketing of alcopops. Young drinkers are a lost cause with immature tastes and we should let them get alcopops out of their system while they're young. Mature tastes come to most people in time anyway.

Cask ale is already a niche product and has been for some years, that's no bad thing. Mainstream products are generally crap, "nicheness" is a positive. After all Aston Martins are a niche product.

We can't emphasise glassware strongly enough. We would like to be part of a campaign to permit two-thirds of a pint glasses - a half is too little for many, a pint too much. Many products already come in 330ml bottles - just less than two-thirds of a pint.

It does dismay us that the smaller, decent brewers can't get their act together individually or collectively to promote their own products. Britain's biggest beer event, CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival, damages the image of beer even further. Big brewers and small brewers should not work together - they operate in different markets. Small brewers should work together but only as long as they get professional advertising people to create the campaign - unfortunately too many small brewers seem to regard good marketing as a pact with the devil!

Jamie Theakston and Kylie Minogue.

Campaign for Real Ale​

• CAMRA believes that brewers should promote real cask ale in a fashionable and attractive way that will appeal to 18 to 24 male and female drinkers. In the past, real ale campaigns have focused on the traditional images of real ale such as the ingredients, tractors and pint glasses. It is important to get young adults to try real cask ale and new campaigns like CAMRA's "Hale Ninkasi" and Greene King's "Some things get better given longer" have got the ball rolling.

We don't think that cask ale is destined to become a specialist, niche product. Brewers need to begin promoting and widening its appeal to make it a mainstream product.
What a lot of 18 to 24-year-olds do not realise is that not all beer is bitter. Brewers can learn much from the successful marketing of wine and should demonstrate that beer can be just as varied, interesting and has similar health benefits.

We think more stylish and fashionable glassware is the way forward to attracting a younger market but the pint glass is by no means dead. It is all about providing glasses that appeal to the different markets.

More than one in three 18 to 24-year-olds said they would try cask ale if it was served in stylish glasses, which is a figure that brewers should take seriously.

We also believe that one-third pint glass could work in pubs but to get youngsters to try real ale we would look at offering them one-third pint tasters to allow them to find which varieties they prefer.

After evaluating the success of CAMRA's generic "Hale Ninkasi" campaign, we would have to answer "yes" to this question. The objective of this campaign was to get more women to try real ale. An updated image of Ninkasi, the "goddess of beer" who discovered beer 4,000 years ago, was successfully used to show that beer is for women as well as men. If CAMRA, with its limited marketing budgets, can achieve this amount of success for real cask ale then we are sure that brewers can be even more successful by uniting their finances. CAMRA is keen to work with brewers and other interested parties to promote beer in a generic way and believe that this is a realistic goal for 2003.

Ant & Dec and Kylie Minogue.

John Holberry, on-trade sales director, Coors Brewers​

• Firstly we've got to face up to the fact that young people don't know why they should drink beer. We've got to focus on what makes beer so great, such as the fact that its healthy, tasty and refreshing, and then link it with what 18 to 24-year-olds like doing such as music and football, as opposed to the current image of beer being full of chemicals and drunk by middle-aged men with bellies. It's not true, but we have to deal with it.

Unless we deal with the problems above it will be a specialist product for a while and then die. The image of cask ale is just not cool and it needs to be if its going to be at the cutting edge when promoting beer's qualities.

The pint glass isn't dead, it still plays a role for a huge proportion of beer drinkers, but there's lots of evidence to show that young people don't want to drink out of a bucket.

Next year, Coors will be selling cases of bottled Grolsch with specially designed 300ml branded and stemmed glasses. Glassware is absolutely key.

We would love it if the industry would join us in our Beer Naturally campaign. Having been competitors for so long, the idea of coming together is a difficult one for some in the industry. We waited a long time for a generic campaign and then, two years ago, decided to do it ourselves. However, if the British Beer and Pub Association got its act together we'll join.

Jonathan Ross and Halle Berry.

Ian Payne, chief executive, Laurel Pub Company​

• I do not believe the 10 per cent figure, but what